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Tulane University Names New Law School Dean

David Meyer, associate dean for academic affairs and law professor at the University of Illinois, has been named the dean and Mitchell Franklin Professor of Law at Tulane University School of Law effective July 1.

A leading scholar of constitutional and family law, Meyer represented the United States as the national reporter on family law at the past three congresses of the International Academy of Comparative Law. Established by legal scholars in The Hague in 1924 to foster the study of legal systems throughout the world, the academy is the foremost organization of its kind.

Meyer has also lectured and published extensively on family law, publishing articles in the University of Chicago Legal Forum, Minnesota Law Review, UCLA Law Review and Vanderbilt Law Review. He also delivered the Siben Distinguished Professorship Lecture at Hofstra University School of Law and the inaugural Weyrauch Distinguished Lecture in Family Law at the University of Florida. In addition, Meyer has been a visiting professor at George Washington University Law School and Brooklyn Law School and is a member of the American Law Institute.

"David Meyer's appointment is the result of a national search that brought us a scholar of international renown," Tulane President Scott Cowen said. "He also has vast experience working directly with students and external constituencies, something we felt is vital in shaping the future course of our nationally ranked law program."

Provost Michael Bernstein praised the search committee chaired by Martin J. Davies, the Admiralty Law Institute Professor of Maritime Law and the director of the Tulane Maritime Law Center, for finding a candidate of Meyer's caliber.

"Exemplary credentials, remarkable accomplishments, fine administrative abilities and experience, a wonderful temperament -- all these were the qualities that drew us to David Meyer's candidacy for the law deanship and made it vividly clear he was a superb choice for the job," Bernstein said.

Meyer received his BA in history with highest honors and his law degree magna cum laude from the University of Michigan, where he also served as editor-in-chief of the Law Review. He clerked for Judge Harry T. Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. circuit and Justice Byron R. White on the United States Supreme Court. He also served as a legal advisor to the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague and practiced law in Washington, D.C. and Chicago before joining the Illinois faculty in 1996.

Meyer will replace Stephen M. Griffin, the Rutledge C. Clement Jr. Professor in Constitutional Law and vice dean for Academic Affairs at Tulane School of Law. Griffin has served as interim law dean at Tulane since last June.

Meyer will be joined by his wife Amy Gajda, assistant professor of journalism and law at the University of Illinois. A specialist on First Amendment law and privacy issues, Gajda will become an associate professor of law at Tulane.